


Obscured | Harry Potter

by fatecanberewritten



Series: Stars [2]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 3: Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, Book 4: Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, Book 5: Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, Book 6: Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, Book 7: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, F/M, Gen, Marauders' Era
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-06-29
Updated: 2018-08-09
Packaged: 2019-05-30 15:29:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,810
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15099656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fatecanberewritten/pseuds/fatecanberewritten
Summary: "If you had the choice, do you think you would choose this life?""That's the thing. I don't have a choice."( marauders era )( hp prisoner of azkaban - deathly hallows )





	1. risk

       Spring mornings were like a dream on the Malis farm, with picturesque, golden hour sunrises, morning dew that caused the grass and flowers to shimmer in the first rays of sunlight, and nothing but the quiet, melodic chirping of the dotterels to provide a calming symphony for all who were lucky enough to experience it. Keanu Malis described his farm as his little piece of heaven on earth, a comment that surprised pretty much everyone who knew him. As a pilot in the Royal Air Force, his friends would always joke that he could hardly spend two minutes on the ground, but on that farm in the Scottish Highlands with his family, Keanu was happy to stay grounded forever. Most mornings, he spent outside, tending to the grounds, or fixing up his mock Clutton-Tabenor FRED that he made himself shortly after the end of the second World War. But Sundays were different. Sundays were for sleep.

       “Del,” whispered a young girl as she gently shook her younger sister awake. “Delphi, let’s go explore.”

       Unlike their parents, Delaney and Delphi Malis awoke early most Sunday mornings, giving themselves the time to partake in their favorite pastime, exploring the grounds of their family farm. With a note to their parents on the kitchen table assuring that they would be back before lunchtime, the Malis girls were off.

       Delaney, the older of the two, led the way as she normally did. Delphi, tired, but happy to be there, walked closely behind her sister, noticing and fixating on a couple strands of soft brown hair that their mother had missed when braiding Delaney’s hair the previous night. She failed to notice until they were on the edge of their property, however, that her sister was about to break their parent’s number one rule, and as soon as she noticed this, she stopped in her tracks.

       “Are we going in there?” the six year old asked fearfully, pointing to the daunting forest that bordered their property. Her sister turned back to her with a mischievous smile, but she didn’t say anything, and she didn’t stop her trek to the forest. “Delaney, it’s forbidden! Mum and Dad will be mad!”

       “Mum and Dad won’t know,” said Delaney, turning to look at her sister once more, “will they?”

       Delphi was silent for a moment, knowing that she was now sworn to never tell her parents about the forest, no matter if she followed her sister or not. “But what about the creatures?” she frantically added after a moment. “Remember what Dad said about the scary creatures in there? What if one of them finds us?”

       “There are no creatures in there, Delphi,” answered Delaney, somehow sounding both reassuring and impatient. “Dad makes those all up to scare us into not going into the forest. There are no werewolves or giant spiders. It’s perfectly, safe, Del, I promise.”

       “I don’t know,” Delphi trailed off, turning to look back to their farm. She knew her parents were probably still asleep, and in that moment, she thought about going back to join them.

       “Come on Delphi, live a little. What’s life without a little risk?” It was then that two sisters met eyes, their almost identical brown eyes communicating a silent conversation, in which Delaney won. 

       “Alright.”

       Nearly an hour later, the sun was well above the horizon, but the Malis girls could hardly tell under the thickness of the forest. The adventure had been a fun one, to Delphi’s surprise, and just as Delaney had said, the sisters came across no scary creatures that their father had told them about. There was one point that Delphi thought she saw a creature that was half man, half horse, watching them from a distance, but after a second glance, Delphi decided that it was only her imagination, as the curious creature seemed to disappear.

       Delphi had just jumped over a fallen log when she bumped into her sister’s back. She looked where Delaney was looking, curious to know why she suddenly stopped. “What is it?” Delphi asked.

       Delaney pointed to a clearing in the trees where you could see the sky poking through, and with little further information, Delphi understood. There, beyond the tops of the trees, was what looked to be an old, mouldering ruin. Many would see it as ugly, or at least think it to be so unsafe that it would it would not be worth the risk, but the Malis girls only saw the beauty of it. The beauty, and the mystery.

       The two walked forward, and with each step, the view of the ruin became increasingly beautiful in the morning spring light, but suddenly, as if with the blink of an eye, the image before Delphi Malis changed.

       What stood in front of her was not the mouldering ruin that her sister saw, but a beautiful, elegant castle, with tall towers, and smooth stone walls. It was like magic.

       Delphi blinked again, not believing her eyes, and found that each time she opened and closed her eyes, the image before her changed, morphing from a ruin into a castle, and then back again, like there was something not connecting in her brain.

       Delaney realized what was happening before her sister did, as she was very accustomed to the signs of a seizure, almost to the point that she could know when her sister would come down with a seizure before it even happened. After all, Delphi had been living with epilepsy for her entire life.

       What Delaney didn’t know was that this time was different. This time was so, so different.

       “Oh no,” Delaney cried, managing to catch her sister as she began to fall back and seize. “Oh no, no, no! I never should have brought you out here.”

       But Delphi couldn’t hear her anymore. Normally, Delphi would come out of her seizure with no memory of the action itself, but that was not the case this time, and that would cease to be the case for the rest of her life.

       “Expelliarmus!” she heard, suddenly seeing a small room in a large tower, two figures, and two floating brooms taking up the space. Her vision was a bit cloudy, but she knew what she saw. Nothing could change that.

       One of the figures was an old, old man who was very pale, but appeared to be extremely calm in what appeared to be a highly stressful situation. He stood alone beside a railing, nothing but darkness and an odd, green cloud behind him. On the other side of the room, beside what looked to be the top of a staircase, stood a young blonde boy, one who couldn’t be any older than seventeen. Delphi took note of the wooden stick in his hand, that he held like a knight would hold a sword, aiming it at the old man.

       “Good evening, Draco,” said the old man.

       Delphi was seizing violently, more violently than Delaney had ever seen before, and as she watched her baby sister, she began to cry. Delphi’s eyes were wide open, staring intently at what Delaney believed to be a ruin.

       “Draco, Draco, you are not a killer,” spoke the old man. Delphi, a helpless, trapped witness, gave everything in that moment to be back with her parents in their heaven-like farmhouse, sound asleep, as she should have been on the beautiful Sunday morning. She did not want to see if Draco was a killer.

       “How do you know?” the boy, Draco, said at once. “You don’t know what I’m capable of. You don’t know what I’ve done!”

       “Delphi,” Delaney cried, overwhelmed, guilty, and terrified for her sister, who would not stop her seizure. This was the longest she had ever been under.

       “I can help you, Draco,” spoke the old man. Somehow, the man remained calm. Delphi quickly understood that while the boy had what Delphi could only assume to be the weapon, it was the old man who had the upper hand, the old man who had control.

       “No, you can’t,” answered Draco, his weapon shaky in his hands. “Nobody can. He told me to do it or he’ll kill me. I’ve got no choice.”

       A cloudiness overcame her, and she lost track of the two in the tower room for a moment. She thought that finally,  _ finally,  _ the vision would be over, but she was wrong. Delphi came back to the tower setting just in time to see a flash of green light that seemed to knock the old man from the tower, and into the darkness that surrounded him.

_       “Delphi!”  _ Delaney was almost screaming when Delphi finally came to.

       Her eyes were still intently fixated on the distant ruin that had started this entire thing, but she saw it as it actually was. Delphi Malis saw what was known as the Hogwarts Castle, and there, in the tallest tower, she could just barely make out the figure of a person, of an old man. She knew, then. She knew that the man she saw in the castle was the man she had just watched die.

       She blinked rapidly a couple of times, and only saw the ruins.


	2. flight

       Her mother taught her to paint not long after the venture into the forest.

       “I don’t know what it is I saw, Eema,” uttered Delphi Malis. The young girl sat atop a kitchen counter beside her mother, who was finishing up the dishes. From the kitchen window, the two could see Delaney and their father out in the fields collecting potatoes and carrots to sell in the town’s market the next day. “I can’t even describe it to you. Even if I could you’d think I was crazy.”

       “Zehrah, I would never think you were crazy,” her mother responded lovingly. “You have a beautiful mind that you are just beginning to explore. I want you to embrace it, not hide from it.”

       Delphi sighed and lowered her gaze to her lap. “How am I supposed to embrace it when I can’t even put it to words?”

       Anne Malis finished the last of her dishes and placed her hands on her hips, cocking an eyebrow at her young daughter. “Who said anything about words?” It was then that Delphi realized that it was not food that stained her mother’s apron, but paint.

       There was one thing Delphi would remember for the rest of her life: her mother handing her her first paint brush. Even her mother had to admit that she was not a natural artist, but the young girl was determined. It was as if she believed that when she could finally capture the episodic memory in art, she could release it from her mind. It seemed to work, too.

       As time went by, the Malis family quickly understood that the day in the forest was just the beginning of Delphi’s abnormal seizures. The spring months turned into summer, and Delphi had had two more epileptic visions, one about a man setting fire to a house with a similar wooden stick to Draco’s, and another about a young girl hurrying along a dark and narrow tunnel, only to resurface in a wide corridor and be threatened by a boy who appeared out of thin air. None of the visions had any major connections aside from the sheer oddness of them, but each one she would paint and study, as if trying to make sense of them. The six year old was growing up much too fast.

       Her fourth vision came in the middle of the night in early September. 

       She was sound asleep, but when she felt it coming, her eyes shot open and a loud gasp escaped her lips before she went under.  Delaney, asleep in the bed across the room, woke with a start as well, and immediately ran for their parents. By the time they got there, Delphi’s seizure was in full throttle.

       “Thank you all so much for joining me here tonight, my faithful followers,” spoke an unknown, almost hissing voice. As if she were in the middle of the circle, Delphi helplessly took witness to a large group of strange, strange people. They stood about in the dark cloaks with hoods drawn, and though she couldn’t see many faces, the ones she could looked almost murderous. Finally, her mind’s eye focused on who appeared to be the leader of the group. The man was tall, thin, with what Delphi could only assume had once been an extremely handsome face. There were still traces, like that of his well-groomed dark hair and his sharp jawline, but it was as if the man was in a stage of reverse metamorphosis. His skin was ghostly pale, but the most off-putting feature by far of his were his eyes - his perpetually bloodshot eyes.

       “Bold of you to meet so close to Dumbledore,” said a man from across the circle. Delphi only had gotten a quick glance at him, but there was something about him that was eerily familiar.  _ “My Lord.”  _ This short phrase, when said by this man, seemed almost mocking. And Delphi began to wonder if the leader was as respected as he believed himself to be. One glance around the circle had Delphi convinced that he was indeed respected -  _ feared  _ most likely. 

       The leader appeared to clench his jaw at this man’s comment, tightening his grip on what looked to be another wooden stick -  _ his weapon.  _ Something about the situation told Delphi that normally the leader would not hesitate to discipline his followers if they had spoken out against him like that - but something about the man who had spoken caused the leader to bite his tongue.

       “Dumbledore does not scare me,” hissed the leader. Only Delphi and the other man seemed to know that he was lying.

       The sun was just beginning to rise when a rumbling was heard in the distance, and immediately, Delphi recognized it. As the daughter of a pilot, the sound of an airplane was like a lullaby to her, but the men began to frantically look around, as if they had never heard it before, as if they were under attack. Only the leader remained calm.

       “Relax,” he told the group, his confidence and dominance becoming apparent. His red eyes tilted upward, spotting the plane at a very low altitude. It had just taken off. 

       Delphi spotted it too. A deep blue, handmade mock Clutton-Tabenor FRED.

       The leader silently and almost gracefully raised his weapon, and with hardly even a flick of his wrist, shot a beam of light at the plane. A sinister smile never left his face.

       The plane went down.

       The images before Delphi began to fade, and as she came out of her seizure, her eyes focused on the face of her father. Tears came to her eyes, and she forcefully wrapped her arms around him.

       “Sweetie, it’s alright,” her father cooed, hugging her with almost as much force. Each time she went under, he feared it would be the time she would never awake from it. “I’m here, sweetie. It’s alright.”

       Behind them, Delaney and their mother watched the pair, as if they were seeing ghosts.

       The painting that followed had been the fastest one she had ever done, and it was because of that painting that she began to hide her works from her mother. She could not bear to worry her like that if there was nothing to worry about. Her visions were her curse, not her mother’s. 

       In the weeks that followed, Delphi would see her father taking out his deep blue, handmade mock Clutton-Tabenor FRED, and would do anything in her power to stop him from flying it. She’d done everything from climbing atop the plane and refusing to move, to hurting herself to get her father to stay grounded. Her visions may be just that, but if there was even the slightest chance that there was a reality to it, she knew that she could not let her father fly. Delphi Malis was only six years old.

       Two weeks had passed, and Keanu Malis was getting antsy. Flying was his passion, and while his farm was his heaven, he needed the freedom of flying before winter struck. That’s why, the morning of the twenty fifth of September, 1966, Keanu Malis set out to fly before the sun even began to rise. He kissed his wife and the foreheads of his sleeping daughters, and made his way out to his beloved plane.

       With the engine of the plane roaring in his ears, Keanu couldn’t hear the screams and pleas of his youngest. At that point, it was too late, anyway. The plane took off.

       Keanu Malis’ deep blue, handmade, now destroyed mock Clutton-Tabenor FRED, as well as his lifeless body, was found not even twenty miles from his farm that same day.  


End file.
